Monthly Archives: May 2011

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. But if you gotta go, you gotta go.

Isn’t it a comfort to know that our mail carriers are protected from being fired on the whim of their supervisors, who might otherwise, shall we say, “can their asses” for perfectly normal behavior such as, shall we say again, “crapping in someone’s yard?”

I wish were was making that up; sadly, I am not.

[Witness Don] Derfler had been waiting for his babysitter when he saw his mailman acting odd at his neighbor’s house across the street. The postal worker then pulled down his pants and that’s when Derfler began snapping pictures.

“We trust people like the postal service and meter readers and people of that nature,” Derfler told us when we interviewed him in April. “To come on to our property and to defecate – it’s just wrong.”

The incident was an embarrassment to the post office and the worker was immediately placed on unpaid leave. Now, a decision has been made to keep the worker but he will be transferred to a different route.

What the heck? The man was taking a dump; his trousers were down. In someone’s yard. How does this differ appreciably from exposing oneself? Gotta say…if this were my yard and, shall we say yet again, my granddaughter were to happen upon a mail carrier crapping in my yard, for crying out loud, in my mind there would be very little difference.

But never fear, this selfless public servant hasn’t lost his job, he’s merely been reassigned where he’ll be free to crap again in someone else’s yard. The National Association of Letter Carriers should be proud of the good work they’re doing.

It seems like in more and more cases, events affecting the economy are unexpected, leading me to believe that the “experts” must be among the most obtuse of people. Take this story, for example. I know next to nothing about the housing market or the mortgage business, but even I could have predicted that most people wouldn’t be all that hot for home loans that take two years to close.

Maria Cantwell has a super boffo idea for bringing down the cost of a gallon of gasoline and it’s so surefire, it’s a wonder no one has ever thought of trying it before! Yes! It’s as simple as reining in the evil speculators who dabble in oil. Note to Maria…while we’re reining them in, maybe we should just go ahead and tar and feather them for some good, price-busting fun!

For those of you who are as confused by the commodities market as I am, let me explain the basics in simple terms. Simple because that’s the only way I understand it myself.

The laws of supply and demand dictate that when a commodity – in this case, oil – is plentiful, prices will be low and when it’s scarce, prices will be high. Speculators capitalize on this by buying when prices are low and holding it in anticipation of future high prices. It is true that by removing oil from the market, the cost of oil is forced upward, but what Senator Cantwell fails to take into account, among other thing which we’ll get to shortly, is that when speculators sell, i.e., release oil into the market, supply is increased, easing the upward pressure on prices and moderating the market.

I’d hate to think that Senator Cantwell knows even less about the commodities market than I do, but it appears as though that may be the case…and she’s in a position to do something stupid out of her ignorance. Or make a fool of herself in public by talking about it.

“For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. That’s not a typo. Two cents.”

In fairness to Senator Cantwell, it does appear that she wants to throw oil speculators under the bus only as a short term solution, which would lead one to believe that she has a long-term plan. If she does, it doesn’t involve tapping into our own, hefty oil reserves; she voted “No” today on S.953, “The Offshore Production and Safety Act of 2011.” Key word being “production.” As in drilling for our own oil. Let’s note that the failure to drill for our own oil “removes” many time more barrels of oil from the current supply than speculators do.

So Senator Cantwell can sit in front of the camera and yammer on about gasoline prices from now until the cows come home and it won’t convince me that she really cares at all about gasoline prices, but for her own good, she’d better not sit there until the Democrats agree to drill here, drill now…she’ll be dust before that happens.

Like this:

I am pro-life. I oppose abortion under any circumstances, no matter how psychologically painful or even physically dangerous carrying a pregnancy to term might be for the mother. I am pro-life because I believe that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and that it’s always wrong to take an innocent human life. Did I not believe the first point to be true, my position would be different. When an unborn child is denied its humanity, there is no reason to protect it in the womb.

Let me repeat: I am pro-life because I believe that an unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception. These are not “only words” to me; in terms of their need to be loved, cherished and protected, I see no difference between an embryo, a fetus, a newborn and a toddler.

Recent conversations with both people who describe themselves as pro-choice and people who describe themselves as “pro-life,” have brought me to the conclusions that to many people, these are only words.

People who are pro-choice hear what I’m saying but have only a superficial understanding of my meaning; they still can’t understand why I want to deny women their “right to choose.” For these people, my words are only words. That’s to be expected; there’s no reason they should understand the depth of my belief and in not understanding, it’s no wonder that my position angers them.

More disturbing are self-described pro-lifers who agree that an unborn child is a human being, but would still grant a woman the right to terminate a pregnancy for so-called compassionate reasons – in cases of rape, incest or danger to her own life. For these people, their own words – their own beliefs, apparently – are only words. In the cases of rape and incest, people who would be horrified to see a ten-year-old jailed for the crimes of his father feel its acceptable for a ten-week-old fetus to be given the death penalty for the same, as if the circumstances surrounding an unborn child’s conception have a bearing on the value of its life. They would be shocked to see a mother put her five-year-old child between herself and an attacking dog, but also accept that same mother’s right to abort her five-month-old fetus for reasons of her own health.

To hold a pro-life position based on the humanity of the unborn child, while still wanting to allow for abortion in certain circumstances is a position that cannot be supported through logic or reason. Furthermore it’s my opinion that this position is less moral than that of the pro-choice individual who holds a sincere belief that the unborn child is lacking humanity.

In fact, I find it to be morally abhorrent; when I say I object to abortion as the unjustified taking of an innocent human life, it’s not “only words” to me.